Xi promotes sound, stable development of relations with major countries in 2025

In 2025, Chinese President Xi Jinping, with his far-sighted strategic vision, continued to promote the sound and stable development of relations between China and major countries around the world.

Under the guidance of head-of-state diplomacy, relations between major powers moved forward on the right track of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.

In the past year, China-U.S. relations, despite shocks and ups and downs, realized overall and dynamic stability. China has consistently held the view that this serves the shared interests of the people in both countries and meets the common aspiration of the international community.

President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump had four phone calls and exchanged letters several times throughout the year.

In October, the two leaders met after a six-year interval, holding a 100-minute meeting in Busan, the Republic of Korea (ROK).

In Busan, they had a thorough discussion on China-U.S. relations and major issues concerning world peace and development. They have guided the giant ship of China-U.S. relations through troubled waters and steered it in the right direction.

"China's development does not contradict Mr President's vision of 'Making America Great Again.' China and the United States are fully able to help each other succeed and prosper together," Xi said.

China-Russia relations have maintained high-level, steady performance. Chinese and Russian leaders exchanged visits in this year of historic significance, highlighting mutual trust and mutual support as the hallmark of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.

In May, President Xi paid a state visit to Russia and attended celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War. Xi said that China and Russia have found a right path of state-to-state interactions between neighboring major countries.

"In the face of a turbulent and complex international situation, China and Russia should firmly uphold the spirit of lasting good-neighborliness and friendship, comprehensive strategic coordination, and mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation," Xi said.

Three months later, Putin attended the commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, including a massive military parade on Sept 3 in Tian'anmen Square at the heart of Beijing.

In December, Xi met with visiting French President Emmanuel Macron during the latter's fourth trip to China.

The two countries had celebrated 60 years of diplomatic relations just a year before.

"China is willing to work with France to enable the China-France comprehensive strategic partnership to advance more steadily and soundly in the next 60 years to fully demonstrate its strategic value and make new contributions to promoting an equal and orderly multipolar world and universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization," Xi said.

The year 2025 marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the European Union. The two sides reviewed their cooperation over the past fifty years of diplomatic ties, and reaffirmed partnership as the basic tenor of their relations.

In July, President Xi met with President of the European Council Antonio Costa and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, who were in China for the 25th China-EU Summit.

Faced with accelerating global transformation not seen in a century and a changing and turbulent world, Chinese and EU leaders should once again demonstrate vision and leadership, make the right strategic choices that will meet people’s expectations and stand the scrutiny of history, steer the right course for the development of China-EU relations, and work to open a brighter next 50 years for China-EU relations, contributing more stability and certainty to the world, Xi said.

He also engaged in in-depth exchanges with leaders of Germany, Spain, Portugal and other European countries throughout the year and called for strengthening communication, enhancing trust and deepening cooperation between China and Europe in a more challenging and complex international situation.

Throughout the outgoing year, China dedicated itself to rejuvenation for the Chinese nation and to harmony in a turbulent world, and opened up new horizons for major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.

Xi promotes sound, stable development of relations with major countries in 2025

Xi promotes sound, stable development of relations with major countries in 2025

A small forestry town in southern Canada is edging toward oblivion as a decades-long tariff dispute with the United States drags on and the latest round of Trump tariffs deals a fresh blow to an already battered industry.

That latest blow has fallen on 100 Mile House, a district of roughly 2,000 people in south-central British Columbia (B.C.), where the sawmill shut permanently in December 2025 - the third in the region to close in recent years, costing 165 workers their jobs.

The closure came two months after the Trump administration added a 10 percent tariff on imported timber, citing national security concerns, on top of the countervailing duties the United States has imposed on Canadian softwood for years.

Maureen Pinkney, the mayor of 100 Mile House, said the shutdown has taken a toll on a small community where mill workers are an integral part.

"That's a real hard hit to very small communities where those people are an intricate part. And we had one mill worker leave and so did his wife who was a nurse. In the shortages of health care workers, that's a double hit which we really feel that," she said.

For workers in 100 Mile House, the mill closure brought steady work to an end.

"It's a direct hit against mill workers here for sure. And all of us went from one day working steady here, and to the next day, we're done," said Brundage, a forestry worker in 100 Mile House.

The softwood lumber dispute is among the longest-running and most costly trade conflicts between Canada and the United States.

It began in 1982, when Canadian softwood lumber exports accounted for more than a quarter of U.S. consumption. U.S. lumber producers argued that Canadian provincial governments gave forestry companies access to public timber at below-market prices, amounting to an unfair subsidy.

Canada has rejected that argument, saying its exporters benefit from efficient industry practices and resource management rather than government support.

Terry Kading, an associate professor of political studies at Thompson Rivers University, said the dispute reflects a recurring U.S. effort to protect domestic industries from Canadian competition.

"Once a sector in the United States, like the lumber industry, feels that Canada is doing something with its lumber, that's dumping or using different methods and things like that. The U.S. ended up defending its lumber industry in the States against Canada," Kading said.

That pattern has persisted for more than four decades, through five rounds of U.S. trade investigations, three bilateral agreements, none of which has delivered a lasting settlement.

The United States has imposed countervailing and anti-dumping duties on Canadian softwood lumber for nearly 20 years in total. The prolonged dispute has added to the pressure on British Columbia’s forestry industry.

According to the B.C. Forestry Council, more than 20 sawmills in the province have closed over the past three years, with tens of thousands of jobs lost.

The toll has drawn a response from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who in a video on Tuesday cast the softwood dispute as part of a wider pattern of U.S. trade pressure on Canada.

"Not the first time Americans have tried to use tariffs to break us," Carney said.

That pattern stretches back more than a century, to 1866, when the United States unilaterally cut trade ties with British North America, the predecessor of modern Canada.

Some Canadian scholars said the long history of trade disputes carries a lesson about trust in their southern neighbor.

"Canadians have certainly learned that they can trust the U.S. completely. Trust the U.S. to harm us or stab us in the back. So yes, we can trust that the U.S. to do that. I think that's a lesson for this generation of Canadians that we can't take the U.S. for granted. And we've gone from an era of implicit trust with the U.S. to needing to verify the trust," said Carlo Dade, the Director of International Policy and head of the New North America Initiative from the University of Calgary.

U.S. tariffs deepen toll of long-running Canada lumber dispute